Golden Axe (Xbox Live Arcade) Review
Posted by Mike Minotti on 09.17.2007
Vitals
Genre
Action Adventure
System
Xbox Live Arcade
Release Date
Q0 0000
A classic or a tragedy?
The best things in life are free, right? Well, I certainly like free things, so when I was given a code to download a free copy of Golden Axe on the Xbox Live Arcade, I was excited. “I’m playing a game for free,” I thought to myself. “This is every gamers dream!”
Depending on whom you ask, Golden Axe is either a classic of the 16-bit era or an embarrassment better left forgotten. I decided to approach the game with an open minded, but I knew I could not handle this task alone. In my opinion, all side scrolling beat-em ups that offer co-op need, and can not stress enough how much they need, to be played in co-op. Luckily for me, I have a friend who’s a self proclaimed Golden Axe fanatic. Yeah, I didn’t know they existed either. So one night we gathered together, I punched in the code, and before I knew it we were selecting our characters. There are three to choose from; a scantily clad female warrior, a male barbarian, and a dwarf with an axe (I think it might be the Golden Axe). They all pretty much play the same, with the biggest differences being how they handle magic. You see, you can cast a magic spell that attacks all foes, and the strength of this attack depends on how many blue potions you have stocked up. Now, the dwarf needs fewer potions to use his ultimate spell than the female warrior, but it isn’t as strong as hers.
Anyways, we’re about to begin our epic quest to save the king and queen. I go into the options menu and set it up so we’ll have the max number of lives as possible. I wanted to make sure we’d play through the whole game. I pick the dwarf, and my friend picks the chick. I laughed inside, but not directly at him (he’s actually a pretty big fella, making his feminine character selection all the more humorous). Soon, we are thrown into combat. You pretty much mash on the attack button, which will trigger a combo if it connects. The actual connecting if often a problem. Oftentimes I’d swear I was right next to an enemy, but my attacks wouldn’t connect. I’d often have to adjust my vertical placement to get the combo going. There are a couple other methods of attack, including the standard jump attack that isn’t all that useful since most (maybe all) of your enemies are stuck to the ground. More useful is the dashing attack, which is a tackle that’ll often throw the bad guys onto their butts. You also have an attack that’ll strike foes behind you. For the dwarf, he actually rolls on the ground for awhile, so he attacks foes a good deal behind him. It’s a little slow, but it’s actually pretty strong. The backstab became my primary means of offense, meaning I spent much of the game spacing myself from foes so that the odd attack would land just right.
The combat gets mixed a little bit. There are mounts, including fire breathing dragons and some other… thing with a beak. They’re strong, but as soon as you get hit once you get thrown off them. You can climb right back on, but eventually they’ll run away. And since your hit box is so big when you’re riding on them, it’s hard not to get hit. In the end, they aren’t as useful as you’d hope. Still, my friend and I would fight amongst ourselves who would get the mount. Even at their worst, dragons are always cool, and you feel a bizarre sense of pride breathing fire on your enemies while your friend is rolling on the ground like an idiot.
One thing that’s really annoying about this game is the fact that every enemy takes so many hits to die. Even the crappiest of minions won’t go down from a single combo. Well, they go down, but you have to wait for them to get up again. So you’ll knock a guy down, only to have to wait around for him to get back up. I can’t stress enough how annoying that is.
The game is only a few levels long. This version of Golden Axe is based on the arcade version, no the Genesis one. So while the graphics look better than what would have appeared on the Genesis, the Genesis version of the game has an extra level added to it. That level is not in this version of the game, which greatly angered my friend.
Frustration is a common feeling one gets when playing this game. Good thing it throws these gnomes at you to beat up every once in awhile. They’re the guys who drop those potions you need for magic attacks, so you really want to beat the hell out of them. In between levels they steal the potions from you, but that’s ok, cause you just have to beat them out of them. Gnome beating is actually a very important mechanic in this game.
Me and my friend beat the whole game is about half an hour. We decided to play through it on hard mode just for kicks. We ended up beating the game again. Hard mode really wasn’t any harder. Sure, you only had one life, but you also have (as far as I can tell) an infinite amount of continues.
At the end of the game, all of the characters jump out of a pixilated arcade machine and start running around a city. It’s bizarre, and slightly retarded. Hmm, slightly retarded. Those two words better describe this game than this overly long review. Here, let me start over.
Golden Axe. It’s slightly retarded.
Graphics
6.0
It looks like the arcade version, which is better than the Genesis version. Still not a very pretty game, even for its time.
Gameplay
5.0
Basic, but flawed, beat-em up gameplay.
Sound
4.0
Boring soundtrack and weak sound effects.
Lasting Appeal
2.0
This game is very, very short.
Fun Factor
5.0
The most fun you'll have is beating the shit out of gnomes.
